Sunday, September 04, 2005

Blair has done it again. If you don't yet know about avian flu where have you been?

Well this is the issue. Avian flu has started in poultry in China and has begun spreading to europe and the scary thing is it could mutate and infect humans.

At this moment in time our government only have enough vaccinations for 2% of the population for 1 week which is about 1.2 million people. Guess what Blair's solution is? You guessed it...

Members of Britain's elite have been selected as priority cases to receive scarce pills and vaccinations at the taxpayers' expense if the country is hit by a deadly bird flu outbreak. Workers at the BBC and prominent politicians - such as cabinet ministers - would be offered protection from the virus.

Why should prominent politicians get it? The only politicians that would need it are the Prime minister, Deputy prime minister, Home office minister and the health minister. I fail to see how the other minnisters would need it.

Why would the BBC need the jab? They aren't needed. We don't need to watch Eastenders in a bloody epidemic or hear the obvious on the news like "You are all going to die". I am sneezing like hell and now the BBC has just made me lose all hope. What use are the BBC? Why can't children, the elderly and the pregant be given the jab instead of the BBC?

Are the BBC being rewarded for all their hard work in helping the Labour government spread propoganda?

In utter contempt for democracy the members of the labour party will be getting jabs while the opposition won't be receiving them. Well it is good to know when the epidemic has finished Blair's party will be the only viable party to vote for seen as everyone else is dead. OH wait no it isn't.

Just to inject a small note of balance here... It's not that I disagree with your general premise that people who aren't particularly useful are likely to get vaccinations ahead of the rest of us, but there *is* a point to the BBC thing. It has nothing to do with cronyism, nor even a desire to watch Eastenders (a notion that I find practically inconceivable in the best of circumstances), but is in fact a holdover from national emergency planning that has been in place for decades. In the event that the wheels completely fall off - whether that's a devastating outbreak of flu-type nastiness, a more conventional natural disaster, an attack by a hostile power or whatever - current emergency procedures dictate that whatever remains of the Government will, in a national emergency, resort to communicating with the populace through long-wave radio. If all other communications systems are off the air due to lack of power or personnel, long-wave will be the very last thing to go: mainly because the entire country can (more or less) be covered by one transmitter...

And of course, Economy 7 timing systems that are radio-operated take their signals from 198KHz transmissions out of Droitwich as well. If all around you are dropping like flies, the transport system has ground to a halt, there's no food, there's looting in the streets and you're confined to your house by men with submachine guns and space-suits, the last thing you want is to be paying more than you need for your electricity bill ;-)

In all seriousness though, it is very important that communication be maintained in the event of a crisis and the BBC maintain some truly essential services. I haven't read the original article so can't say for sure, but I'd imagine that it's only those people responsible for services named in national emergency planning guidelines (and some inevitable supernumeraries and hangers-on) who will receive the jabs. If that's not the case then we do have an issue - there's certainly no need for the whole BBC to get them!

Hey, good news for me anyway! I work for the BBC! Of course the fact that the first I've heard about this (after reading about the blog on the BBC's news website) rather than being given my time and place for my injection I'm sure doesn't in any way undermine the truth about what is being said... I'm sure these aren't just the paranoid ramblings of someone who in a previous age would have written to Queen Victoria in green ink.

Just to clarify - if everyone in the BBC is getting this jab, we haven't been told. I think, maybe, our lil blogger has got it just a smigden wrong. Heaven forfend!

Hi - it's me again. Trust me, newspapers exaggerate. Also, it would not be possible to sue for defamation in a story like this, as it doesn't meet the conditions. No libel has been committed (trust me, I'm a journalist).

What's more likely is that certain key workers in the BBC would be given the stuff in the event of an outbreak for the very reason explained in the article.

When the horsemen of the apocalypse come, who do you think will tell you? If everyone in the BBC is dead, there's no-one to spread the news. When terrible things happen, people turn to the BBC to find out what's going on. It kind of makes sense that there might be a few people left at the corporation to keep the shebang ticking over.

EastEnders actors will not get it, and I'm willing to bet I won't either. I'll let you know if I do.

And if the government was giving out rewards to those it favours, I think NewsCorp, Mr Murdoch's small company, will be getting the injections before us.

Most of the people who work at the BBC are reasonably normal people, you know...

When I was talking about Eastenders I was actually being sarcastic. lol. I know that the people in the news would get it but we still don't need the BBC to get it. What about skynews? I don't see them getting it. The fact is if there is an outbreak and the bbc is taken down the army can take over.

Most of the people who woek for the bbc are reasonable people? lol. The only journalists that would ever want to work for the bbc are marxists who love political correctness and if your not one of those you must be insane to even want to work for the bbc.

Hmm, if you were being sarcastic about EastEnders, then you obviously don't think that everyone in the BBC is getting these jabs, which sort of undermines what you were saying in the first place... It's true what they say: if you give people enough rope, they'll tie themselves in knots.

On your substantive points, Sky News is a good service, and very entertaining. It also doesn't have as rigorous a checking mechanism as BBC News. I'm not saying that to try to score points, as I'd usually rather watch Sky News than BBC News (you can see why I'm posting this anonymously). But you also have to remember it's owned by a media mogul. In the slightly ridiculous doomsday situation you outline, would you not rather get your news from an organisation you own (ie the BBC - I hope you pay your licence fee) than one owned by Rupert Murdoch?

And as for the army running the news outlets at the beginning of the end of the world, well I think that's as good an argument as any for giving these jabs to BBC journalists.

Finally, the Marxist chestnut is as predictable as it is daft. To test your theory - how many BBC journalists do you know? I know quite a few, none of whom get their red flags out every May 1. It is tiresome, but also slightly offensive to the journalists in the BBC who work their balls off to make it the best news service in the world. And if you disagree, turn to channel 531 on Sky (Fox News. Prop: R Murdoch) and have a look at what rolling news could be like in a BBC-free UK.

Well youdontknowme, the BBC does provede excellent services, and the cast of Eastenders should get the jab, that way we call all be on our our death beds listening to that wonderful tune; whilst listening to little mo's stupid idiotic laugh.

Oh the sweet bliss that will be oblivion the release from the agony will be wonderful.